Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Yesterday, Mythic posted the patch notes for the upcoming 1.4.1 release. They have always said this one was going to be mostly about bug fixing and polish, and it pretty much is. There are a few interesting changes though, which I'll talk about after the page break.

Armor Set Changes.

The Renown Rank and level requirements for several item sets have been reduced to allow players to use them sooner in their careers. With the new ranks for the above sets, a new armor set has been added to fill in the gap between Warlord and Sovereign.

A lot of players are concerned about the 'power gap' in Tier 4. As it stand now, you have players wearing Annihilator all the way up to Warpforged fighting it out. With this change, Annihilator and Conqueror will be moved down into Tier 3. Most players will be entering Tier 4 wearing Invader instead, which will help close the gap.

Along with the requirement changes, the affected armor sets can now be bought with Gold. This should ensure that players are able to acquire them. It is unclear if medallions/crests can still be used as well. To bridge the gap between Warlord and Sovereign, a new set (aka Diet Sov) will be added. Players struggling to obtain Sovereign should get a nice boost.

Does this solve the power gap problem? Probably not, but it is a needed change. There are still many concerns about the power of the new Doom/Warpforged sets which a number of players want addressed.

Renown Increase

We’ve made some adjustments to the renown bonus that is available for players that have the Progression pack. This means the curve for the Tier 4 levels will increase slightly and it will now continue into the early post-80 levels and ramp down to normal.

This should make the post-80 renown drop-off a bit amoother. It should also get players into some of the new gear (blue's) faster.

Packmaster

The following changes have been made to the Packmaster Skaven class:

o The cooldown for Strength in Numbers has been lowered to three minutes.
o Thwap! and Thwap!Thwap!!Thwap!!! are now ranged abilities.
o In addition to the Rat Ogre specific buff, which has not been changed, Thwap! now heals any friendly target for about 2% of the target's max health. The Packmaster cannot use this on himself.
o Thwap!Thwap!!Thwap!!! now places a HoT on any friendly target, except himself. The strength of the HoT is still dependant on the number of Overconfidence charges the Packmaster has built up: 1 - about 3% of the target's max health per tick. 2 - about 4% of the target's max health per tick. 3 - about 6% of the target's max health per tick. 4 - about 8% of the target's max health per tick. 5 - about 10% of the target's max health per tick.

The Packmaster was rarely seen in the RvR Lakes, mostly due to how dependent it was on the Rat Ogre. With these changes, the Packmaster should be a lot more useful. We may even see more Rat Ogres in the field as a result.

Scenario Changes

Tier 4

Gates of Ekrund

Mourkain Temple

Tor Anroc

Maws of Madness

Reikland Hills

Serpent’s Passage

All of the tiers will see some changes, but I only listed Tier 4. I'm glad to see the shuffling, as we have been doing the same few scenarios for quite some time now. More importantly, James indicated that they want to change the scenario lineup more often than they have been.